Area Business Manager
Sun King
Sales & Business Development
Tanzania
Posted on Sep 9, 2024
Job Location: Unguja
The team you would join:
The EasyBuy Direct Sales team is the market-facing arm of Sun King’s pay-as-you-go (PAYG) direct-to-consumer sales business. The Easy Buy Direct Sales team recruits and manages the company’s network of thousands of commission sales agents, called “Energy Officers”, that promote and sell Sun King’s PAYG solar solutions and provide customer ongoing service in their local territories.
The team you would join:
The EasyBuy Direct Sales team is the market-facing arm of Sun King’s pay-as-you-go (PAYG) direct-to-consumer sales business. The Easy Buy Direct Sales team recruits and manages the company’s network of thousands of commission sales agents, called “Energy Officers”, that promote and sell Sun King’s PAYG solar solutions and provide customer ongoing service in their local territories.
About the role:
The Area Business Manager will coordinate sales, collections and distribution operations in the area they are assigned for the direct distribution of Sun King Solar products sold on Pay-As-You-Basis (also called and recognised as “EasyBuy” Business unit) through a network of agents called as “Energy Officer”. The Area Business Manager is ultimately accountable for generating sales, ensuring collections are timely and accurate and keeping the entire Direct Distribution growing rapidly in a sustainable manager.
The Area Business Manager will coordinate sales, collections and distribution operations in the area they are assigned for the direct distribution of Sun King Solar products sold on Pay-As-You-Basis (also called and recognised as “EasyBuy” Business unit) through a network of agents called as “Energy Officer”. The Area Business Manager is ultimately accountable for generating sales, ensuring collections are timely and accurate and keeping the entire Direct Distribution growing rapidly in a sustainable manager.
- Department
- EasyBuy Direct Sales
- Employment Type
- Fixed Term - Full Time
- Location
- Tanzania
- Workplace type
- Onsite
- Reporting To
- Regional Business Manager
What you would be expected to do:
Hire & retain Energy Officers: Hire, train and maintain a team of at least 40 Sun King Energy Officers in the area. Use multiple avenues for finding the right talent to sell Sun King EasyBuy products with the help of village influencers such as the village heads, teachers, religious heads, doctors, farmers and others, as applicable. Create a reputation and goodwill for the mission of Sun King to provide clean, affordable and reliable sources of energy in their areas.
Training of Energy Officers: Provide training to the Energy Officers on several aspects of the business, such as sales, collections, product, technical, inventory, and logistics. Ensure that they are fully supervised in the best professional manner, demonstrating the highest levels of integrity, ethics and professionalism while dealing with customers.
Provide role clarity to Energy Officers: Provide complete clarity to Energy Officers related to their day-to-day tasks, sales & collections plans, routes and targets. This includes ensuring Energy Officers have sales routes/areas to sell in, they know on how to demonstrate and sell Sun King products, they have the confidence to be able to present and resolve basic customer queries on the spot. They have access to Area Business Manager at all times in case of questions and concerns.
Daily field visits: Have a weekly touchpoint with every Energy Officer in your area – either through in-person meetings, making a sale to the customer in your area or having a call. Resolve all possible issues faced by the Energy Officers and report them to your Regional Business Manager every week. Ensure that the first five sales of each Energy Officer are made, along with the Area Business Manager in the area, by each Energy Officer to ensure that each Energy Officer fully knows the core sales and collection process.
Work with Energy Officers: Conduct joint field work with a group of Energy Officers to provide sales and collection training on a weekly basis and drive EO engagement. This includes doing night activations, market activations, visiting local communities and gatherings such as SACCOs, Self Help groups, retail centers and markets to make group sales.
Exceed your sales & collections targets: Meet or exceed sales and collection targets established on the 2nd of every month by your Regional Business Manager. Provide daily and weekly updates on sales, EO recruitments, Customer issues and resolutions in alignment with your Regional Business Manager.
Drive robust field sales processes: Review collection progress with your Energy Officers daily and provide adequate training to them on driving better collections in your areas. This includes customer and area profiling, ensuring regular and timely collection follow-ups, resolving customer issues to ensure they make payments and ultimately repossessing the systems as a last recourse in case the customer defaults.
Remain externally focused: Keep an eye on companies selling similar products within your area and ensure you take adequate measures to protect and grow our business from pressures. Pre-inform your management team and take measures to ensure Sun King remains a paramount brand name in Solar products for your area.
Resolve customer issues: Provide world-class customer service to your customers as it relates to product delivery, training on how to use and make payments, installation, and after-sales warranty issues. Ensure that you work with your Energy Officers to establish clear expectations and processes to resolve all customer issues within 24 hours.
Control Marketing & Other spend: Provide adequate marketing materials & equipment (such as smartphones) necessary to all your Energy Officers. Ensure we get maximum return on investment for all the costs we incur in areas of marketing, supply chain, store maintenance and smartphone issuance.
Review meetings with Energy Officers: Conduct weekly table meetings with Energy Officers and ensure that you have RBM present in those meetings to resolve any outstanding customers or EO issues. Coordinate, plan and organise the meeting to have maximum attendance and progress. Recognise outstanding performers from time to time and ensure the motivation of Energy Officers is maintained at an all-time high.
Grow Retail presence: Ensure the retail network in your Area grows with the help of an Area Retail Coordinator hired under you. Ensure all retail-related activities are followed per process, and the base of high-selling retailers grows exponentially within your area of operation.
You might be a strong candidate if you:
- Have a degree in a Business-related field OR equivalent and at least three years of hands-on experience in Sales.
- Have excellent Computer knowledge with comprehensive knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint
- Have extensive Customer Care experience
- Are innovative, and you think out of the box
- Are skilled in Planning, Organizing, Prioritizing, maximising value and seeing the big picture
- Are able to skillfully build relations works on internal & external relationships
- Listens well, coaches others and is disciplined in their learning practice
- Has Operation Excellence (Keeps promise, seeks to be informed and gives excellent Customer Satisfaction
What we offer:
- A platform for professional growth in a rapidly expanding, high-impact sector.
- Immerse in a collaborative culture, energized by Sun King's employees who are collectively motivated by fostering a transformative, sustainable venture.
- A genuinely global environment: Engage and learn alongside a diverse group from varied geographies and backgrounds.
- Tailored learning pathways through the Sun King Academy to elevate your leadership and managerial capabilities.
About Sun King
Sun King is the world’s leading off-grid solar energy company, combining cutting-edge product design, fintech, and field operations to deliver energy access for the 1.8 billion people who live without an affordable and reliable electric-grid connection. Sun King has connected more than 20 million homes to solar power across Africa and Asia, adding over 200,000 homes each month.
Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via ‘pay-as-you-go’ purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.11 a day via mobile money or cash.
Instead of paying for expensive, polluting, and health-damaging kerosene for lighting or diesel for power, customers unlock savings through accessing solar power and after one to two years of payments, customers own their solar equipment outright. To date, our Sun King solar products have saved customers more than $4 billion cumulatively.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 28,000 field agents — over 650,000 payments each day. Embedded electronics inside each Sun King device regulate usage based on payments, similar to the operation of a pre-paid mobile or electricity meter.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 28,000 field agents — over 650,000 payments each day. Embedded electronics inside each Sun King device regulate usage based on payments, similar to the operation of a pre-paid mobile or electricity meter.
From cost-effective solar systems that provide home lighting and phone charging to robust solar inverters that can power high-energy appliances such as laptops, computers, refrigerators, and more, effectively acting as a full stand-in for grid power, Sun King’s products cater to a wide range of income segments and energy needs. Leveraging its proven distribution network and brand, Sun King is expanding its range of products and services to encompass clean cooking, electric mobility, entertainment, and more, aiming to address the needs of our underserved customers.
Sun King employs 2,800 full-time staff in 12 countries, with specialties spanning product design, data science, logistics, customer service, sales, software, operations, and more — all with a passion to serve off-grid families.
Sun King is committed to gender diversity in the workplace. Women represent 44% of Sun King’s workforce.
